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Louisville ensemble provides soundtrack to silent films

By Kimberli Turner Colorado Hometown Weekly

Posted:
10/16/2012 04:31:39 PM MDT

In 1994, Rodney Sauer went looking for waltzes, fox trots and tangos at the American Music Research Center on CU Boulder's campus, but he walked away with a passion for creating scores for silent movies.

Sauer formed the Louisville-based Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra in 1989. The five-piece ensemble plays for ragtime and tango tea dances and balls around the state, but their primary focus now is performing as the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra during silent film showings.

Sauer was drawn to silent film music 18 years ago when he discovered the Alvin Layton Collection at the American Music Research Center. The collection includes around 2,400 arrangements for silent movies and theater orchestras, Sauer said.

Pianist Rodney Sauer formed the Louisville-based Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra in 1989. Five years later, the five-piece ensemble began performing original scores to silent films under the name of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Pictured: Sauer rehearsed Friday, Oct. 12, with the group in his home studio in Downtown Louisville.
(Kimberli Turner/Colorado Hometown Weekly)

The AMRC research archive is a joint project with the University of Colorado Libraries and the College of Music, available to anyone looking to preserve American music.

Sauer has received a few collections from people wanting them preserved and he has organized the orchestrations and donated the music to the AMRC.

"No one's interested in this stuff because they don't know how to use it," Sauer said Friday, Oct. 12, as he held music sent to him from a library in Maine. "I have directed a couple collections their way (to the AMRC) because I want it to be preserved."

Mont Alto features Sauer on piano, David Short on cello, Brian Collins on clarinet, Dawn Kramer on trumpet and violinist Britt Swenson.

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The silent films of the 1920s had between three to 70 people in an orchestra accompanying the film, Sauer said, and his small ensemble emulates what those musicians did.

"It's very much how this music would have been seen back in the 1920s," he said. "The secret is, I don't write new music for (the films) but I'm selecting the music."

Sauer has quite a collection from which to select his music -- four filing cabinets in his Downtown Louisville home are filled with photocopies of about 4,000 orchestrations from surviving collections of four silent film theater music directors.

Sauer sifts through his files and splices those short pieces together to create a score for a silent film. He's created about 100 scores and each one could include around 40 compositions; one score has as many as 70 individual pieces.

"It's a pretty big project," he said, noting it takes three or four hours over a span of two to three days to create the score, after an afternoon of making photocopies of the pieces he selects.

The group then rehearses the score in Sauer's home, which has a practice space and recording studio.

If the ensemble is rehearsing a completely new score, the musicians plan on a few rehearsals at three hours each before the silent film event, but it takes less time if Mont Alto is reviving a score they've already performed.

To prepare for a showing, the group performs the score as the film plays in the background. The musicians take cues from each other on when to begin playing each short piece and, when it's all said and done, "the score sounds fairly seamless," Sauer said.

Mont Alto performed its score to the 1926 silent film "Bardelys the Magnificent," on Saturday, Oct. 13, as part of the Louisville Cultural Council's biannual silent film event.

The picture orchestra premiered the score for that film in Kansas in 2009 and also in San Francisco and Boulder the same year. The group was asked to revive the film by the College of William and Mary in Virginia for a performance this week.

"Bardelys" was considered a lost film until 2006, when a print of the film was found in France, Sauer said.

LCC volunteer and past president Julie Kovash said the organization has hosted the silent film event for around a decade.

"We're extra lucky to screen this almost-lost film in Louisville when they're performing in larger venues in larger cities. It's almost a lost art form," she said.

Mont Alto was commissioned to create the "Bardelys" score for a 2008 DVD release of the film for Flicker Alley, a DVD distribution company.

"It's sort of been brought back to life and not seen since the 1920s until this new version became available," Sauer said. "It's a rare film. It's certainly rare to see it with live music."

Mont Alto has recorded 26 film scores for releases on DVD, Blu-Ray and Turner Classic Movies.

The Mont Alto Orchestra regularly appears at the Denver, Telluride and San Francisco film festivals among others, and have performed across the country, including venues such as the Lincoln Center in New York and Grauman's Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.

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